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23 November 2013

Whether it is writing for academic purposes or for one's own note-taking/learning, how does one keep track of all the articles and publications one comes across? Evernote is a great tool for keeping notes , while both iAnnotate and GoodReader are useful to work with files, but one still needs to make bibliographies. Here are some suggestions which offer students help.

12 November 2013

At the beginning of any course, teachers will be busy selecting ice-breakers for their new classes and finding ways to present expectations, ensuring that evaluation procedures are clear and essentially, setting up a new culture (i.e. classroom culture).

This is usually a fun time, a "honey-moon" period, where everyone is getting to know others in their class. Yet, sometimes, there will be groups which take more encouragement to form a cohesive learning group. With increasing diversity in schools reflecting our social worlds beyond the school-gate, consolidating a cooperative classroom culture may take time to succeed.

One approach may be to create a search engine just for a class or group. As an example, I include a search engine I made with my own name, but will certainly be making one for each of my classes!

Fun doesn't have to be only for the first week of learning ;-)

Besides, learners need to know that their teachers care about them and their classroom experiences as much as they do about their grades.

9 November 2013

Though there are sites where you can use images from (e.g. Flickr ELT PICS and others which you can find here), using clip art for worksheets or websites is still a great idea. Clip art can be used to create badges (e.g. if you use a LMS through which you can award badges to learners) and to brighten up any kind of worksheet (analogue or digital).

WP Clipart has over 50, 000 images organised in folders, making it simple to search for an image within a theme.

Clipartlord is another site which offers clip art for a wide range of themes.

School Clip Art, is still another source for clip art, dedicated to education.

Graphics Factory may be more suited to use when using for instance, a blog, or even a wiki, creating animated GIFs for education. (many make great interactive badges as well) If you use Windows, you may want to have a look here.

8 November 2013

It's that time of the semester, busy with exams and different forms of assessment. For teachers, this intense period can sometimes become quite stressful - how does one assess that which does not fit into a number?

Students learn so much in classrooms; how does one attribute a number to social skills for example? How does one attribute a mark to leaving a classroom tidy? One approach is to award students badges through a LMS. Edmodo, for example, has a great way to award badges to students, whether it is a badge for a good presentation, team work effort or simply for someone adding that extra bit of sunshine to a lesson. Teachers using Edmodo may use badges which are already shared, or make their own for their own classes and assessments.

Often, however, teachers need to follow rubrics, whether from their own department or seek guidelines which have been shared online. This post is a short focus on where to find marking rubrics.

A wonderful site for teachers is ReadWriteThink, where, among so many other rich teaching resources (especially great interactive tasks which may also lend themselves for assessments) , one can also find assessment rubrics.

An example is Webbing Tools, which is used for hypertextual thinking and writing. You only need to browse and will certainly find an activity which can be integrated/adapted for assessment.

2 November 2013

No matter how one wishes to understand the use of webtools and apps, digital literacies are here, are necessary and will not be vanishing from our contemporary world so soon. One may regard digital tools as mere tools, with the emphasis on what learning outcomes emerge from the use of these tools. One may also take a broader view and understand digital literacies as not only the use of digital tools as a means to accomplish a learning goal, but also how digital literacies are more than a checklist of practical, tech know-how.

Learning how to research, use search engines and evaluating websites is also part of digital literacies. In this post, I'd like to suggest some resources to help both teachers and students when evaluating websites.

1 November 2013

With a world of Apps and excellent interactive websites, I sometimes feel that videos are left behind in the choices for classroom activities. However, there are great collections and websites offering videos which are appropriate and engaging for lessons.

Curious is a video community which has videos for lessons as well as being a means for teachers to share their video lessons.